12-04-2025
Nebraska butcher shop adds 3 new meat vending machines
HOWELLS, Neb. (KCAU) — When you visit a vending machine, you would typically expect chips, candy or beverages to be on sale. But there are some machines at one Nebraska butcher shop that offer something a little different.
Faltin Meat Market in Howells, Nebraska has installed new meat vending machines inside what's known as the 'Meat Room.'
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'I have two of the machines that are refrigerated, so they're holding temperature well below 40 degrees,' Faltin Meat Market owner Ryan Baumert said. 'And then I have a vending machine behind me that is frozen. And so it's holding, you know, negative numbers.'
The 24/7 Meat Room was recently opened to the public, with three vending machines offering products such as fresh meats and cheeses. Baumert said he was thinking for quite some time about a variety of ways to offer the store's products to customers after store hours.
'The idea came actually from an article in the Midwest Messenger back in I think 2018, where it talked about a processor in Wisconsin doing a similar idea,' he said.
After buying the machines from a company in Des Moines, Baumert and his wife got to work. However, they were quickly met with some challenges.
'We've had to do some tweaking as we were building the machines,' Baumert said. 'Once they got on site, we had to figure out which products could go on what level of the machine so they fell properly and which coils would dispense them. So my wife and I spent a couple of months just prepping the machines to make it work for our products.'
Baumert says business has been booming and has surprisingly helped the local bars.
'We have a bar just down the street,' Baumert said. 'The bar owner and I were talking, he was excited and said after my grill closes, maybe my folks will come down to you, get something and then they can bring it back and keep drinking their drinks. And he talked to me a couple of weeks ago and said that is the case and it's been working out pretty well.'
Baumert said he hopes the machines will bring more people into town.
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'Stop here and then maybe take a look around our town and see what we have for other businesses, if there's something that might fit their needs and look around the town and see if it's someplace that maybe they want to move to, maybe they want to settle here and try and help the community,' he said.
Baumert says he has plans to possibly add more machines in the future.
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